French doctors have warned that Paris hospitals are on the verge of collapsing due to COVID-19: “We will be forced to classify patients”

Paris intensive care doctors say spike in coronavirus infections may soon overwhelm their capacity treat the sick in hospitals in the French capital, possibly forcing them to choose the patients they can take care of.

The warning was made public on Sunday in an opinion signed by 41 doctors from the Paris region. Published by the newspaper The Sunday Newspaper, It comes at a time when French President Emmanuel Macron has vigorously defended his decision not to completely shut down France as he did last year. Since January, the Macron government has imposed a nighttime curfew across the country and enforced a series of restrictions.

But with the rise in infections and the shortage of intensive care beds in hospitals, doctors have increased the pressure for a total closure of France.

Doctors from the Paris region who wrote in Sunday Newspaper they said: “We have never experienced such a situation, not even during the worst (terrorist) attacks” which targeted the French capital, in particular the attacks by Islamic State extremists in 2015, which left 130 dead and filled the theaters. emergency. Paris of wounded.

Doctors have predicted that the new softer restrictions imposed this month in Paris and some other regions will not help the epidemic rebound quickly. They warned that hospitals’ resources would not be able to meet needs, forcing them to practice “disaster medicine” in the coming weeks when cases peak.

“We already know that our capacity to provide care will be overwhelmed,” they wrote. “We will be forced to classify patients to save as many lives as possible. This triage will affect all patients, with and without COVID, especially for adult patient access to intensive care. “

Macron continues to insist that not locking France up again this year, like some other European countries, was perfect, even as more than 2,000 deaths per week push the country closer and closer to the 100,000 lost mark. because of the pandemic. The country now has more than 94,400 dead. “We did well not to enforce a blockade in France at the end of January because we did not have the explosion of cases that all models anticipated,” Macron said last week. “There will be no mea culpa on my part. I have no regrets and I will not admit failure. “

The pandemic has worsened in recent weeks in France, which has exceeded 40,000 daily infections for several days. Above all, the hospital situation is particularly serious in several regions, with a number of patients in intensive care at a level similar to that of the second wave in November in Paris and the first wave in the Far North.

The government’s strategy is to try to avoid a third general lockdown (like those in March and October last year) and bet on restrictions in departments and regions, while trying to maximize the vaccination campaign. This race is supported by the sharp increase in vaccine arrivals from next week, with some three million weekly doses, which will rise to four million by the end of April or early May.

The goal is to vaccinate 30 million people by mid-June to the end of June, out of a total population of 67 million, and by then vaccination will be open to healthy people under the age of 55. , predicts Macron. However, the president acknowledges that his administration is faced with the challenge of “convincing as many people as possible” to be vaccinated, and believes he has an irrefutable argument: the vaccine “is the answer” to the exhaustion of the population.

With information from the AP, AFP and EFE

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